The Arduino is good if you want simple real-time control of electronics.

The RaspPi is good if you want something with a screen and keyboard or a web-server or anything else a full PC can do, but also want some electronics in the mix. It has less interfacing capability than the Arduino and can't do hard real-time faster than about 100ms, but it has Ethernet out of the box without added hardware and software support for high level functions that would be complex to support on the Arduino.

Then come Single Board Computers, which are several times the size of the RaspPi, have less interfacing but more power and memory.

Then a full PC -- much bigger, much more power hungry but more memory, more speed and it can run MS Windows.

You would probably need both.The Arduino can do low level control. All the buttons, the motor for the bill feed etc.But for the bill acceptor you will need image recognition of a very high quality. That is where your PI comes in.

with regard to the vending machine - any bill acceptors I have used perform validation themselves, so you only need to signal to them to accept or reject a note - so the PI would not be required there - however when you get into logging, troubleshooting (think plugging in a keyboard and monitor) etc the PI offers you a whole lot more.

The raspberry pi can run a lot of off the shelf software that will never run on an Arduino.

Not only that the $35 price includes the ethernet port. A Ethernet shield for Arduino costs more than the Pi. The Pi also includes two USB host ports. It also includes an SD card slot. My Android tablet cost me almost ten times the cost of a Raspberry Pi yet it has no host USB ports (just one USB device port)!

I found it very easy to install an Apache web server, PHP interpreter and back up my dokuwiki site on the Raspberry Pi. I can talk to my Pi with SSH, sFTP and through a web browser on a PC or a tablet (using Android).

I was also able to add a USB to virtual serial port fdti adapter that talks to a PIC on a solderless breadboard . Since I have some years experience programming PICs in C I have no need for an Arduino.See http://members.shaw.ca/danielpeirce/not ... o_led.html (edited because page moved)

Last edited by danpeirce on Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:40 am, edited 2 times in total.

Attachment is an image of network and wi-fi connection to Android tablet I use with Raspberry Pi

network_connections_home.png (15.45 KiB) Viewed 15015 times

sleicreider wrote:what would be the best for my different projects i wanna try to make:

1) Turn Light(LEDs /LED strips) on/off via Smartphone or Computer(LAN/WLan)2) Play music from Smartphone(with WLan) where the Signal Revceiver(Rasp Pi/ or µC) plays the music on my SoundSystem

3)Connected Camera on one the Boards(PI/µC) which sends mi video signals to my PC to see whats going on via LAN

which one can handle with these tasks?

The thing about the Raspberry Pi is it is capable of running versions of Linux. Rasbian (the current recommended Linux distribution for beginners) actually has remote access set up in the default configuration. I was able to control my Raspberry Pi from my Android tablet over Wi-Fi without having to write any firmware or purchase any extra hardware (well I did need to get a 5 v 1A power supply for the Raspberry Pi but everything else I had already for headless operation and I already had an android tablet and a wireless router for it)! So the Raspberry Pi can easily handle remote access from a phone phone, tablet and/or PC. For the other side of project 1) the raspberry pi does have some GPIO but given the raspberry pi still has long lead times for delivery and it sounds like kernel support for the GPIO is coming later for now I am sidestepping using the GPIO. Instead I am connecting a PIC to an inexpensive ftdi board and connecting that to the USB port. The kernel is setup with a virtual com port driver and recognizes my ftdi board by default.2) Playing sound from the Raspberry Pi is not something I have tried but it does have a sound out jack. I have found I can transfer files from an Android to the raspberry pi using ES File Explorer File Manager (and sFTP). The RPi command line interface is available on an Android with ConnectBot (and ssh) so I would imagine one should be able to play a sound file using the CLI. The thing about the Raspberry Pi is the hardware is included and software is free and easy to install. For an Arduino you would have to purchase the necessary shields and write a program for the remote access. Just the ethernet shield by itself costs more than a Raspberry Pi. On the fly decompression and playback of MP3 files is not simple. An MP3 shield for the Arduino that would handle the details costs $40 from sparkfun (again that shield is more costly than the Raspberry Pi). The raspberry pi is an extremely versatile general purpose computer with a lot of hardware included. Anduino is a Microcontroller board with a lot of useful shields available that can be added on.3) I don't think this is so easy (at the moment). Plenty of people are taking snapshots with a web cam and the Raspberry Pi. Getting it to stream video apparently does not work with included drivers as of August 4th but perhaps that will change with updates. This is not something I have attempted myself yet. see http://sirlagz.net/?p=493Also a HD camera for the Raspberry Pi is in the works. don't know details yet.I doubt is is going to work on an Arduino ever. see http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaB ... 1226951266

hey, thank you for detailed answer i think i'll buy the raspberry pi anyway, to project 3 i got information that some people already worked with some webcams or other cams and this should work with the raspberry.For video stream over raspberry people told me to get info about motion.....

i've seen in your picture that u use this ftdi & PIC for extra hardware access(I/O)? or ´what exactly are this 2 items?

i was thinking about getting a gertboard for more GPIO

For people like myself who already have development tools for working with Microchip PIC devices and are already familiar with programing PIC MCUs in C it would be nice to incorporate the Raspberry pie into existing and new PIC projects.

A PIC is a MCU much like the AVR MCU used on the Arduino boards. We already use a PIC in our APSC1299 course and the are plans to use it in a proposed PHYS1600 course. We like the PIC because we can stick it directly into a solderless breadboard and use the internal oscillator without external components. We can use it without a crystal. http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/De ... e=en010284The simplest way to get the PIC to talk to a PC running WinXP is to add a FTDI USB virtual com port. The same FTDI board works on the Raspberry Pi.

The gertboard may be the best way to go for people who are not already using PICs. I don't have one so I cannot comment on it.

The PIC and the AVR are very similar. You can use an AVR without a crystal too.

It's been ten years since I programmed a PIC, so I might be out of date, but at that time the only compilers you could get, you had to pay for, whereas the AVR uses the Gnu compilers. That is because all the AVRs have 32 general-purpose registers, whereas the PIC has a small number of special-purpose registers; the AVR is easier to write a compiler for. But having fewer registers means that the PIC suffers less latency responding to interrupts.

In my view, and generalising massively, the PIC is a hardware engineer's MCU, and the AVR is a software engineer's MCU. In almost all cases it comes down to personal preference; there are very few jobs for which either one is clearly suited over the other.

The greatest problem for me will be programming with lights(LEDs) cause I saw i need resistors there and do a lot of brazing/soldering(or how its called in eng.) there.And like I said, i'm no hardware specialist :O

i think i wont do much with the GPIO , cause i dont like making this hardware stuff(resistors etc), just wanna try to switch LED strip on, or something like that, people told me this should work with the PI.I rly dont know how this works with the IO/GPIO pins, but well see XDCause im making more Software based projects, the PI should be enough also to test some Hardware programming with the GPIO to turn 1-2 lights on.

After this tries with the light, i will see if i like it and try greater projects(like u said then i will buy also and arduino and combine it with the pi) else i stay on Software Programming XD

rurwin wrote:It's been ten years since I programmed a PIC, so I might be out of date, but at that time the only compilers you could get, you had to pay for, whereas the AVR uses the Gnu compilers.

MPLAB C and Hi-Tech C (there may be others) are both available at no cost, but with limited optimisation over the paid for versions. The differences are most apparent with floating point or complex functions (printf and scanf, for example), but for hobbyist/low volume stuff, a choosing a PIC with extra memory can compensate. Both support inline assembler, which is a useful catch-all if you can bear PIC assembly code.

mikerr wrote:If its primarily hardware stuff you're doing - controlling a few servos, leds etc go arduino as it is setup for lots of IO

...

Best option is using both a Pi AND an arduino - you can get the Pi to talk to the arduino via serial or USB

This is the conundrum I'm having. I'm thinking of making a robot with the Raspberry Pi at its heart, but I'm trying to decide whether or not I need to put an Arduino (or rather an Atmel microcontroller) on my board. I only want to drive two motors so I only need 4 GPIOs. Even though it's not running an RTOS so isn't going to react quickly, if the RPi is making all of the decisions then I might as well connect its GPIOs directly to a motor controller (via protection and buffering as necessary) rather than talk to a microcontroller and get that to drive the motor controller. But that just seems too simple, I've got this nagging feeling that I'm missing something, it should be more complicated than that, and I will need the microcontroller after all.

i read in a lot of forums about making robots, or making a little airplane for tsunami victims ,controlled by a wirless controlle(airplane has weather sensores,camera,etc)they used PI and a Arduino togetha